Getting Back into Fitness - Simon Ward, High Performance Human Coach
Sprout Sweater Episode 8 : The Big Sweat with Dave Algeo and Simon Ward
Join Dave Algeo aboard "Sprout 1" and take another journey into your inner world where mind, meaning and metaphor collide.
This episode is a 'Big Sweat' interview and Dave is joined by Simon Ward, triathlete coach with a wealth of experience including coaching the Brownlee brothers. Simon has decades of experience supporting those who are getting back to fitness as well as top class athletes. In this episode, we discuss lessons learned from working with high performers and how we can get back into fitness and a more healthy lifestyle.
Simon Ward is the owner and founder of High Performance Human.
Since 1995, Simon Ward has been a noteworthy coach in the triathlon field. He has been honoured 6 times by UK 220 magazine as Coach of the Year. He currently resides in West Yorkshire. Simon has more recently been focussing his attention on guiding athletes and leaders to becoming high performing humans. He recognizes the key roles which sleep, nutrition, and other holistic factors play in our lives.
Simon doesn’t just talk the talk; he walks the walk. He’s been participating in triathlon since 1987, having completed 19 Iron distance triathlons, including the IM World Championships in Kona and the iconic Norseman triathlon. He completed Marathon des Sables twice. He was also part of a successful English Channel relay team, setting the fastest time for the year.
When Simon isn’t coaching other athletes, he can be found on his High Performance Human podcast, sharing experience and wisdom from others and giving listeners the ability to optimize their own lives.
You can learn more about Simon and connect with him via him many channels by visiting - https://linktr.ee/simonward
Dave Algeo is a writer, coach, trainer and speaker empowering others to live big, by identifying the small but significant things that can transform the life we are living. Join Dave on the good ship 'Sprout1' as we explore the inner galaxy of the human mind, and find the sprouts that make the biggest difference. These are the sprouts you are looking for.
Search for 'Sprout Sweater' in your favourite podcast feed. To find out more about the podcast, and episode show notes at Podcast — Stress(ed) Guru and more about his in person and online events at www.stressedguru.com. Drop Dave a line at dave@sproutsweater.com to ask questions, offer feedback or suggestions for future podcast content.
Episode 8 Show Notes
The following is a rough draft of the content (not a full transcript - more notes forming the basis of the podcast recording
Dave: Hi everyone, welcome to the Sprout Sweater podcast and again we have a big sweat episode. This week, I am excited to have friend and triathlon coach, Simon Ward. Hi Simon, how you doing?
Simon: Hi Dave, thank you for inviting me. I'm good, thank you.
Dave: Great. I can't wait to get into the conversation, and I know my very short introduction of a triathlon coach is totally under selling your background, your experience. So do you want to tell the audience a little bit more about yourself and what you're doing now etc and then we'll dive in because I've got loads of questions for you.
Simon: Yeah. Okay, well, I started working for myself back in 1993, and that was as a personal trainer, but I was already doing triathlons then. In ‘95 I did my first Ironman Triathlon and wrote an article for a magazine called Ultra-FIT on the back of that. And then as a result of that, the magazine called 220 Triathlon asked me to write for them. And in those days, there was no internet really, for most of us, so I had a little classified ad in the back of the magazine, and there was a link at the end of my article, connecting to that advert and then if people were interested in coaching, they'd send me a letter asking for a questionnaire. And then, obviously, we'd go through the whole sort of process that you and I grew up with of sending mail backwards and forwards over a few weeks until we got to where I wanted to be.
So, my coaching business grew alongside my personal training business. In 2000 I started working with another coach called Jack Maitland and we developed our business. British Triathlon also asked us to take on the role of talent ID coaches for the North of England. So, we had to try and find young men and women who might be potential Olympic champions and we were lucky enough to have a couple of athletes living in our area. Most people probably heard of them and all know the story there. I wouldn't say I was responsible for their fame, but I played a part in it, a small part. Sorry, not for their fame for their progress but I played it, I played a small part, and it was nice to be there at the beginning and see them through.
So, my coaching business developed, and I became a tutor for British Triathlon. I've been teaching and mentoring triathlon coaches for the last 15 years and stopped doing the Personal Training in about 2015. Sold our side of my business, carried on with the triathlon coaching and now we are developing, what we call the high-performance Shuman, which is more about life coaching for triathletes if you like. Because that's what I spend most of my time doing and writing the programs is easy. You know, suggesting to them how much running and swimming and cycling they should be doing but what you find is that there are life events that get in the way so children, work illness, travel, etc. and helping people to manage all that stuff as well as getting sleep and eating right and everything else is managing stress which obviously is your particular domain. Those are the things that dictate whether somebody is actually going to have a good race or not.
Their ability to do training is governed by their management of their life really so if you can manage your life, then the other stuff is a lot easier.
Dave: Yeah, I totally get that. And I know a lot of our conversations over the years have factored around that you know I guess there's common ground there because I always
had a view that nobody wants to manage stress. We have to and for me, I'm not, all I'm fascinated by is the physiology of stress, that's not what drives me. It's just that we have to deal with stress because it gets in the way. So, for me it's how can we put stress in its place in order to, you know, whatever that is, whatever the goals or the, the place in life we want to occupy and move towards. So that's where I think a lot of our conversations have featured around that.
Simon: Yeah, well, and let's not pretend that stress is all bad. You know you need good stress. We need stress, you know, when I was at school, in college, I used to leave it until last minute to get my assignments done because the stress of having to have it done by a certain deadline would motivate me. And I know there's a lot of people like that. You know, the stress of having to perform on a particular day as an athlete or in the business setting drives us forward so we need good stress but too much of that stress, I talk a lot about nervous systems and there's basically two types of nervous system. There's a sympathetic, which is a fight or flight - which is when we were, you know, a hunter gatherer and the Sabre tooth tiger was either chasing us or we were chasing something else to get food. Your adrenaline goes so you can deal with the situation but then as soon as the caveman had brought his cat, you know, his prey back to the cave then he would rest and digest and he would relax and that's the parasympathetic side. Unfortunately modern life, always being connected to phones and computers and everything else means we never actually have time to relax and rest these days, do we? So, if you have too much stress and it's on for too long, you’re like that TV character you know, stress Derek who had the big vein beating along at the side of his neck and just, you never relax and so that affects sleep. And when sleep starts to get affected then it has a huge impact on just about everything else, we do in a negative way.
Dave: Yeah. And I want to pick up on sleep in due course as we go. There was a model that I remember in our conversations you used to talk about which was, it was a simple, but very striking, it was the wear and repair. Now I'm not sure where that originated from, but I love that kind of simplicity of the idea that you're either in a state of wear, or repair. I mean you would explain it a lot better than me.
Simon: Probably just like I’ve just explained really, wear is the rest, wear is to fight or flight. You’re constantly moving, you're on the go. And repair is you have to get everything, needs time to repair doesn't it ,you know the brain needs sleep to help it repair and get ready for the next day. And the body needs time to repair after we've subjected it to excessive stress, which is good for adaptation. We need to subject the body to stress in order to get fitter and stronger but there's a limited amount we need. And we have to back off from that every now and again for it to grow stronger in order for us to keep doing that. So, there's a balance and that's where the high-performance human thing comes in. It's about trying to find the balance.
Dave: Yeah, and you know, in terms of it the physical comparison of stress and strain to grow, is the same for psychologically and emotionally. We need some challenge, we need some strain, and adversity, to an extent in our life. It’s how, how much and for how long, and also how we, the coping mechanisms, and tools we have in the kit for that as well. So, it certainly applies to the psychological aspect of our life as well. So, the high-performance humans, dive in a little bit more to that because you kind of said that often it's about focusing on the other things rather than the actual training itself.
Simon: I suppose there's been lots of lessons throughout all of the work experiences that I mentioned a few moments ago. When I was a personal trainer a lot of the ladies that used to come to see me particularly but probably half of the men as well wanted to lose weight. And I think what we've learned over the years is that losing weight isn't just a question of cutting out calories and exercising more. That works for some people, but some people are genetically wired just to carry a bit more weight. And there's more evidence coming out about that now. There are some people who just never seem to gain weight anyway. But weight isn't necessarily an indicator of health. When I looked into it in more detail why some of these people were struggling with their weight. They would say ‘well I binge eat’, and so we try to identify patterns of the binge eating. It was like when they were tired and then the tiredness came from when their husbands were away with business and they were on their own at home looking after the children, trying to run the house and also maybe a little apprehensive about being in the house on their own, so they didn't sleep well.
So then, not sleeping well influenced poor choices for eating and overeating and eating at the wrong times. So that's one thing. I then identified with a lot of triathlon clients that they were tired all the time when they were training or they were stressed because they were trying to, you know, running the company, getting up at five o'clock to get the train to London to go for a meeting, to come back and then trying to get a training session in at nine o'clock at night. Then having dinner, then not being able to go to sleep. So, you know, ended up with five hours in bed every night and just not making the progress they wanted, getting injured. Entering four races which took up all of their time and losing focus on other things in their life like relationships with their partner or with their children, with their friends. Immune systems that were compromised by poor sleep nutrition or too much training.
So, all of these lifestyle factors influenced the results and the ambitions that they had which were perhaps over ambitious. So, if you're not changing all of that foundational stuff. If you're not improving sleep. If you're not improving nutrition. If you're not improving stress management, time management., no amount of exercise that you throw at the project is going to lead to the result you want. So, I started going backwards and thinking, ``What if I could encourage them to get more sleep. What about, or if they can't get more time in bed, what about if we could help them to get better quality sleep - trying to create pre and post sleep routines; trying to create a better sleeping environment and then maybe looking at why they didn't get enough sleep. Often it's because you're just sitting there idly watching Netflix or messing around on your phone before you go to bed. So, some habits which are easily corrected.
And then once magically, once you correct sleep everything else seems a lot rosier. People start saying well I can concentrate more, and I feel more motivated and actually I make better choices with my food. So, you've switched one thing and now all of the other things start to happen. And then, of course, training becomes more consistent because they miss less of it, and magically results start to happen.
But I've done nothing to change the training.
So, I started writing about this, doing podcasts about it and now I've been very pleasantly surprised about the number of people who get in touch with me saying ’I really like this concept’ to ‘really like the idea that you focus on lifestyle.’ It seems like a no brainer to me but apparently not everybody does.
Dave: Yeah, and I guess a shout out for your podcast, as well. What's it called again we'll put the links in the show notes and there were a couple of episodes I wanted to kind of flag up as well for you.
Simon: Yeah, well it was originally the Triathlon Coach Channel because that's where I started out. We've just trademarked the name High Performance Human actually, so we were waiting until that was done before we started using it publicly. So, we're just changing all the branding on it now, so it does show up as the High-Performance Human podcast. If you go into iTunes and search for my name, you're more than likely to find it.
Dave: Brilliant. Yeah, great. So, we will put some details in the show notes, and this is where we connect a lot on it because, as I say, I guess coming at it from the perspective of a lot of the clients that I work with and myself, you know, I suppose I could use myself as that case study. Somebody who was never an athlete, you know. Never grew up that way, but always had a dabble. I was consistently inconsistent, I would say. And exercise, you know that I cycled Lands’ End to John O’Groats, and I was not a cyclist. I mean, you know those kinds of things you do these daft things, sporadically. But what I found is that as I've gotten older, my body and mind are less forgiving about that inconsistency and it's only really in the last couple of years that I've found that consistency is the key. But I've really had to focus on ‘how do I make this sustainable’ and I think this is one of the big challenges for many of the people that have worked with and speak to, is that they may or may not have had a background in fitness. They may have dabbled, they may have had some consistent fitness but life as you said gets in the way, family, work career, and it gets put on hold. And then returning to it, you know, whether in your mid-30s, or, you know, late 40s or, you know, turning 50. We kind of still got that younger person's mindset of right “I'll just get myself out, get some trainers on and get out for a five-mile run. And then I'm hobbling back, my hips are killing and, you know, and it's how do we start to help people who are already very busy. And I think you've already hinted that you're given some good tips around how to stop but it's kind of what I'm fascinated in how do we pick those keystone habits like the sleep that helped you just tweak it around so you can start to make some changes.
Simon : Oh, well, I think that is a good place to start. I mean, it depends whether you have intrinsic or extrinsic motivation really doesn't it. A lot of people say that they need the challenge of a goal to get them out to how. So you've mentioned doing Lands End to John O’Groats. You pick up a big hairy goal, a burning platform and then it's like, well I'm gonna have to do some exercise to prepare for this otherwise it's going to be, you know, it's going to be painful, I can't get through it all on just sheer willpower.
Whereas other people have intrinsic motivation, they’ll do it. They don't need that goal, they just like the process, recognizing what your motivation is. Now for me and maybe it was well I'm getting older now. I'm nearing the end of my 50s and I look at my father, I look at other people that are in their 60s and 70s that are still, my dad's not exercising and his life sort of slowly declining you know like a lot of people. He's not ill, he's just slowly declining. Whereas I see other people who are just enthusiasts, they're still doing triathlons and I think which one I would like to be. I think I'd like to be this one. I like to be the one where I have the choice of what I want to do. So now I want to introduce a concept to the physical pension, you know I think everybody's aware that if you want to have a happy financial later life that you start paying money into a pension from an early age and the pot grows and, you know, it's quite painless if you put in £100 a month away from the age of 19. It's much more painful if you're trying to do it from the age of 55, because you know £100 a month isn't going to amount to much. So a little bit every week. So, the physical pension is like the fiscal pension. It means if you do a little bit everyday life is going to be much rosier than if you start late and try to do a lot every day.
So how did you get started finding something that you enjoy?
I mean it doesn't have to be running or cycling. If you enjoy walking with your dog or walking in the fells or the hills with your friends, walking is a fantastic way of getting fit. It's less jarring on the body even if you've had, you know, knee replacement or knee surgery or hip surgery, you can still walk. You can go out there for long periods of time. There's an awful lot about mental health and being out in nature so there’s that side of it as well. You can walk at a pace where you can talk to people so conversation and walking in groups, things that we've realized how much we've missed. Equally if you like cold water swimming and you want to go to the lake in the middle of the winter that's fine, but you need to find something you enjoy because it's much more likely to be sustainable if you enjoy it. If you enjoy being in company and there's a group of people that motivate you to go, then, that helps too. I also think that one of the biggest issues and the reason why people fail with goals is because you take on too big a goal in too short a time. So, you'll see in the New Year, somebody will say, I want to run a marathon by April. You've given yourself four months to go from couch man to marathon man or marathon woman. And it's just a huge, a huge, you know, rise. It's like looking at the side of Mount Everest when you've never done any climbing and think now can I get up there.
Whereas if you set yourself a goal of being able to achieve something in a couple of years, then doing a little bit every day will take you towards that goal. It won't be, it won't seem so insurmountable and it's much more manageable and you are most likely to keep at it if you've got small things, you're not making such drastic changes. Same with weight loss, same with anything, you know you don't build a business in three months, do you that's profitable and pays for you to have a big house and a nice car. It takes years of hard work building slowly. So, I think taking a long-term view, having patience and understanding that you're on a journey that there will be times when you're making good progress and times when you stall and maybe even times when you go backwards but, keeping moving from your start point is important and doing something every day. It sounds really simple, but finding something that is sustainable whether it's exercise, whether it's eating, whether it's sleep, is the most important thing.
Dave : Yeah, absolutely. And I think, going back, I guess to unpick a little bit of the motivation bit at the beginning is really important to define that because I've worked with a couple of guys and myself that I find an extrinsic thing like setting a deadline of a run or something really helps. But having something intrinsic behind that is also really powerful but you're kind of turning it into something tangible with that risk. So, for me, the big turning point was, you know, I've got little Rosie whose five-year-old now. I had that waking up moment of, you know, when she was born thinking, I'm 45 and when she's 21 I'm going to be how old. You know if I'm carrying on the way that I'm doing, then, you know, God willing, you don't know what's gonna happen randomly or because of genetics or whatever, you know, but I want to be fit, healthy and, you know, mobile all of those things. So, I kind of found that it was a combination of those two things that I think teasing that out can be really useful can't it. So that, why?, can help you when you have those days where you can't be bothered.
Simon : I mentioned the Brownlee’s. The Brownlee’s have been well documented as talking about their application to training, the fact that they just love it. But make no mistake, they don't wake up every single morning of the year and they haven't done for the last 20 years waking up every single morning going ‘Yay, it’s six o'clock I can go swimming now!’ Right, there'll be times when they want to turn over and turn that alarm clock off. But you know what, they never even think about that. It's just the alarm goes off, they turn it off, they roll out of bed, they get their kit on their probably get a coffee and they drive to the pool because that's the habit. In the same way that you’ll get out of bed or I'll get out of bed and go into the bathroom and just pick up the toothbrush and while I'm half asleep will just brush my teeth because it's a habit its something that you've been doing for the last number of X years. Right, so it's just a process. The same for Special Forces soldiers, they don't like getting up and walking out in the rain and, you know, being out in it all day, just something they do. You know farmers, farmers have to go and milk the cows, don't they? It doesn't matter whether you are feeling good or not, the cows have still got to be milked. It's just a habit that you do. These things you just get on with stuff and you get doing it you don't and so, I think we start off with inspiration, which you see something else that somebody achieved, and we think well that's great. I could, I'd love to do that. And then maybe watch a little video on the telly to motivate you to start with to get you going. And then you develop the discipline to do this every day but eventually that discipline turns into a habit and then once it's a habit you feel empty and unfulfilled if you don't do it. Don't you know if you go out of the house without brushing your teeth you feel like, oh my mouth so clean. So, it's the same for me if I don't do my mobility now in the morning for half an hour when I get up, I feel like I'm a little stiff and I don't move as well and I feel like something's been missing from my day.
Dave : Yeah, yeah. I love that and I think this is the thing about habits, isn't it, and this is where, if we can start smaller, and consistently, rather than all or nothing which is very much the that's the story that was me and still you know start to walk but start smaller we're more likely to build it into life and sustain it so that it does become automatic. One of the things I think you've hit something about, you know, waiting for motivation or I don't feel like it. It's the kind of, well those, they do it anywhere. It kind of brings me into my challenge at the moment, which is 60 till I'm 60, and on New Year's Day I decided that, while I hate burpees and back at CrossFit the last couple years and whatever, I hate Burpees and every time I turn up and burpees are on the board I'd have that sinking feeling. And I thought, do you know what, I need to not necessarily love them, but I need to get over this and what I set myself was 60 burpees a day till I'm 60. So I've got like 10 years to go, well nine actually cos I’m 51 next week. But the point of it is, it's that I did not want to do that every day. I still don't want to do that any day. But, and I'm not saying 60 everybody you know you might start with four or five press ups or whatever I don't know, but you do something to prove that you can do it anyway. And I haven't grown to love burpees but I have changed my association with that so that it feels, or it feels wrong if I miss and I have missed in one or two days over the last 6 or 7 months it is now. And to the extent that I was at crossfit this morning and burpees we're on the workout of the day it felt like a treat because I didn't have to do them separately. So, it's kind of that habit building can be really powerful. If we just can give it that sort of consistency over time
Simon : When you do a burpee then do you try to get them all done in one go.
Dave : No, I have to set myself the challenge of that at times but I tend to, I have fallen into a bit of a habit of doing 15 at a time. I wanna get faster.
Simon : So, what do you do, do you do 15 in the morning, 15 at lunchtime, 15 in the afternoon?
Dave : No, because psychologically they're hanging over me for the rest of the day. I get them out of the way in the morning. At the moment my little task is to get them faster so I'm breaking down into the five’s now. The other thing I guess is by doing it in the morning, it's done, and it feels like, say you can eat the frog.
Simon : I think we used to talk about that when we did some of our presentations - eat the frog first. You should probably explain that to everybody Dave so people understand what you're talking about.
Dave : Yeah, Mark, was it Mark Twain, he's accredited for a lot of quotes
Simon: I use Mark Twain as a reference.
Dave: But if on a morning the first thing you do when you get up is eat a big live ugly frog, you can go through the rest of the day knowing that that's the worst that can happen. And it's all about procrastination isn't it. And I think it was a Brian Tracy wrote a book
Simon: Yeah, he did, 21 Habits. Yeah, but also if you've got two frogs, eat the biggest one first.
Dave : Yeah, yeah, yeah and that's so typical because I was, you know, I talk about cabbages you know, the cabbages is the challenge, slicing and dicing down into sprout sized actions which is where I think starting habits if you can start with sprout size consistent actions. But the point is what’s your smelliest, most rotten cabbage that you need to be dealing with because that's the one isn't it, the procrastination thing.
Simon: We've during the last year, just going back to your burpees thing. I've been obviously helping people to navigate working from home and loss of facilities, no swimming pools, open races off, you know, helping people to enjoy the process of working out rather than having that extrinsic goal because that was removed. And also because people didn't have the opportunity to go to the gym, doing what they could at home and so we came up with these on the hour every hour programs so that you can do the program in three ways. You can do it as one program in the morning if that was your choice, you know, to get it out of the way. Or if you were the sort of person who tends to sit down a lot, you could choose to do it on the hour every hour so this would be something else. And I know one of my podcast guests coming on this week talks about this as a micro workout.
If you started at eight o'clock and went through for 10 hours till 6pm, you could do six burpees, every hour right? That would take you 30 seconds, maybe 40 seconds but you could accumulate 60 burpees during the day. And that's a lot easier for a lot of people. Likewise, chin ups. If I wanted to do 20 chin ups in the day, I can't do 20 in one go but every time I walk past the chin up bar if I did two throughout the day, I could easily accumulate 20 until such a point as I could do 20 nonstop. So that's another for those people who are listening going ‘I could never do 60 burpees’, but, you know, you could do them throughout the day and that then encourages you to get out of the chair and get moving and it encourages you to get down on the ground and get up again so there's a lot of lot of movement practice there. It's a more manageable way of going about this however you do it. It might work, might not work for everybody but it definitely works for some people.
Dave : Now I like that idea because I think that you mentioned a phrase last time we spoke about you could be not a couch potato but like an athlete on the couch type of thing.
Simon : Active couch potato
Dave : Active couch potato, that was it. This idea that you know you get your workout done and it's almost like right that it's done, and you then fall into the rest of habit of being immobile. And I guess if we're trying to get back, you know, we're talking a lot about fitness and being healthier, but I guess it applies to a lot of different habits that just because you get it out of the way and then fall back into some old habits, how much you are really challenging it. So that idea of sprinkling it through the day can really kind of help you tune back into the positive habits, in any given that aspect of fitness.
Simon : I mean, we are talking about fitness and health and mobility, but, you know, we only have to rewind 50 or 60 years to probably our grandparents, right? They didn't go to the gym because they didn't need to because their days were full of activity. The only reason that most of us feel like we need to do exercise now is because we spend all day sitting down. Certainly as you get into your 40s and 50s we noticed that it can creep up on you. An extra hundred calories a day, is an extra pound a month, is an extra almost a stone a year. If you switch off from looking at, you know, looking at the scales, when you're 40 and then start again, when you're 50 you could be five or six stone heavier and think well how's that happened? I don't eat badly.
It doesn't have to happen like that, it can happen very very gradually. Part of the problem is that we are just not getting the exercise. So my granddad used to walk to work. He walked half a mile, didn't walk 10 miles to work, he walked half a mile to work. It probably took him 10 minutes, and then he would walk home at lunchtime, and then he would walk back an hour later, then he’d come home at five o'clock. And then he goes out; if it was from spring until autumn he’d go out in his allotment for an hour, tend to the allotment. Then he’d dig up vegetables for that evening, or the next day's dinner. My grandma meanwhile would clean the house by hand. Hang the washing out. Big baskets full of, you know, woolen blankets and cotton sheets, really heavy. She put everything through the Mangle and hung it out on the line. She would walk to the shops two or three times a day to get lunch, to get a paper, to go and get a jug or beer from the pub. And then at the weekend they’d both be in the allotment and they would walk places. They would get the bus into town, and they would walk around, and they would carry the big shopping bags back, right. Everything was manual. So, people were active, and they didn't need to exercise. But those are the things that keep me fit and healthy. We've lost sight of that with the introduction of automation and, you know, home delivery and all of those other things so now somebody, smart people said oh actually we need to create gyms and we need to have personal trainers and we need to have apps to get people moving again but it's only to replace what we don't naturally do. I know some people say I don't like that fitness lark - well what about living. Forget about fitness, what about healthy living. What about being able to move properly, what about being able to still do stuff when you in the 70s looking after your grandchildren or your daughter. You know, you don't have to be a fitness freak to do that, but you still have to be healthy and have enthusiasm for life. And that's the driving factor for me is I want to be riding around on my push bike going downhill at 75 mph screaming ‘yee ha’, what a ride. I don't want to be thinking, I wish I could do that.
Dave : Yeah, and I think that this is really useful isn't it for that because one of the things I found for me and many that I talked to or work with is that we kind of turn around and think, is this it? Is this where I'm at? I call it the before you know it phenomenon that you mentioned there. You know, one minute you're 40, then you 50 before you know it you're a stone and a half if not three stone heavier. You cannot walk up a flight of stairs without pausing, that kind of thing. And as you say it happens incrementally. And yet at that moment we can then start to ‘think right I’m going to go on this’, ‘I'm going to sort it out’ and try to fix it overnight or in six weeks, whatever. And actually, it came on slowly. How do we break it off, you know, how do we look at sorting it out and that's by changing things over the longer term. And I love your idea of the physical pension. But one thing that springs to mind is that we start paying into that physical pension at whatever time, you know. If 10 years ago, you knew the best time to plant a tree but 10 years ago, you know whatever, now is the next best time. So you start paying into it by daily movement and activity. The beauty of it is if you consistently go, you're gonna, you're actually drawing benefits from it almost immediately because of the wonder that is the physical body.
Simon : There's a really interesting paradox that you see now. I think it was in a little video that did the rounds on social media. There's a garage, big garage, like a warehouse hanger and there’s this brand new Lamborghini. You see it and the cameraman's looking at it and then the door comes open. There’s this guy inside, and he's an old guy so he's probably like a lot of people that they think right when I get my pension I'm going to buy myself a nice sports car. Right? So most people when they, when you're buying a car that's 100 grand plus, perhaps can't afford it until they are wealthier and later in life. So, this guy he’s driven, he's got the car, he's proud of it and he's sitting there. Of course if you've ever been in one of these cars it's like getting inside a small capsule. So, he's got in, now he's got to get out. He's not mobile enough in the hip to get his leg up over the sill and underneath the steering wheel to put it on the ground outside so he's trying all ways. Eventually you see him rolling onto the side and he puts his hand out and then he puts his other hand out and, and then he gets out and he's on, he's on all fours and the guy with the cameras laughing at him. But that's the embarrassing position isn't it. When you're 20 or 30 you can get into a car like that but most people can't afford it. And when you can afford it, you can't enjoy it anyway because you've lost the fitness and mobility to be able to move properly. How many other things will happen in people's lives where they've been saving up this pension diligently since they started work at 18 and when they get to the point where they can draw on that pension, they can no longer do the things that they wanted to because they're not physically able enough. Ah, that's an awful thought isn't it that that pension that you've thought about using for so long when you were in your 60s, 67 maybe now for some people, you're actually going to have to use it for mobility aids to get up down the stairs easily. You're not going to be able to go to the Great Wall of China and walk on that you're just going to go and have to look at it because she can't walk up the stairs anymore. Be such a sad way to end your life but it's fixable for the majority of people so easily.
That's a sad picture I've painted isn't it and everybody's like ‘God this guy's a miserable git’.
Dave : No, but I think this is where it's useful. I mean we're both positive people, but it's useful to just dwell for a moment on the realities of some of these things, isn't it? You know the reality is we're going to die. And, as you said, how would you like to go out, you know, piling down a hill on your bike at 70 mph or, you know, kind of fading away. It's like the old Highlander quote ‘it's better to burn out than fade away’. Now obviously there are different ways of burning out. But the point of it is that sometimes if we just think about that and project in the future, and say, actually that's not what I want and yes, it could happen, it might be out of my control, some things could happen, that's fine, I'll control the controllable. If that's not what I choose, and in not choosing it, that gives us a bit of a stronger why, if not a lot of a stronger why which is where the Rosie thing I’ll be 66 when she turns 21 God willing. I want to be fitter then than I am now, that’s the kind of thing so I have adopted this phrase of healthier than yesterday. That idea is not that I'm, you know, I'm going to get to do more and more and more. It just means by doing little things each day incrementally, it improves flexibility, all of those things. So, if we're in that place where hopefully you know, those who are listening, there may be one or two who are thinking, you know what, yeah, I need to make an adjustment. I've got my pension perhaps taken care of, my career has taken over, you know, family are grown up or whatever how do I recalibrate this in a way that I don't suddenly burn any bridges but I do recalibrate it enough to start building the habits in a way that doesn't mean I'm going to go all or nothing and hurt myself you know all of those things. What's your thoughts?
Simon : Well, I definitely agree that if you start at the end and work backwards, you know, like any journey - where do I want to get to, I want to get, I want to be here this is my avatar. This is my vision of myself when I'm, you know, in 20 years’ time when I'm 77 my vision is of me still being able to do this. So, between then and in the next 20 years what do I need to do to make sure that happens? What am I doing now? What do I need to make sure I'm doing so? And then, like you say, start small. I mean it's as simple as getting a little bit more sleep. Move a little bit more. You don't have to train and do exercise, formal exercise - just move. Don't sit down as much. Yeah, there's some simple things you can do there. Take the opportunity to walk if your journey is less than a few hundred yards whereas we sort of automatically jump in the car. Just don't, don't be sat in front of the telly for hours on end. Eat a little bit better. Start by getting rid of a lot of sugars in your diet and removing processed foods, take time. And I realise there may be people listening saying well i just don't have the time to do that in my life. I sympathize, empathize and understand that situation. I would say that when we look at what most people do if they did an audit of the way they spend their time in their life there are pockets of time that are not used productively because you're on social media. Social media doesn't really contribute anything to your life. If you want to keep in touch with real friends, pick up the phone and talk to them, you know, don't do it through Facebook and now that Boris is releasing us go and spend time with them having a coffee and going for a walk. So, you could stop watching TV, you could stop social media, then you could do that, you could just move a little bit more. Join the yoga class as we said, and with the food just try getting some fresh fruit, fresh food and making meals from it and maybe doing it as a family or a couple. Just keep it really simple.
Dave : Just before you carry on I'm gonna do what I should have done at the beginning and I usually do, is I'm putting my desk up because I'm missing an opportunity here to like, stand up so bear with me. The point is there are opportunities, aren’t there. Everybody's different, everybody's circumstances are different so it is experimenting but that's one of the things there was an episode, I think you did a review, I can't remember what number it was of your podcast I listened to and you were reviewing some of the guests you had on.
Simon : That was the one where I was looking at the five big lessons from 200 podcasts.
Dave : Yeah and one of the things that you said which totally resonates with me is that it's about, yes, there's advice on this, that and the other but work out what works for you. And I often think about become your own kind of scientist or experimenter. There's lots of what you could or should do, but ultimately, it's going to work for you, so you've got to try it, and then give it a go in bite sized chunks.
Simon : Well, as a coach of people doing triathlons, I'm often presented with the opposition to an idea that well what does the research say?, and the research, yeah, the consensus of that research might say this is the pathway, you should take, but if you look at any research there are people that respond to placebo. There are people who are outliers and respond hugely to a particular method. There are people who don't respond. And then there's the consensus that people in the bell curve the bit in the middle. So, the general consensus might say this works but then it won't work at all for you know you are me. The only way we will really know is if we try something. Like, I'm not a big fan of keto for endurance athletes. There are one or two people who are, who say that they're doing well. I would suggest that some of those people aren't truly following a keto diet. And there are other people for whom it works really well but a lot of those people have got illnesses. Let's say heart disease where the keto diet has helped them to change and improve their health. There's a huge extrinsic motivation to follow that diet but keto diet is super restrictive on what you can eat. But if you would say to me, Dave, right I've changed my nutrition, I've lost weight, I feel great, it's sustainable, and I'm happy doing it, then why would I argue with that, if it's working for you. Yep, so n equals 1. It’s your own study and if you found a way of exercising that works well for you then fantastic but you have to find that out, you have to experiment. There are some people for whom everybody's trendily going onto a vegan diet now. But there are some people for whom eating more fibre is rubbish. If you've got Colitis or some other stomach issue, eating more fibre’s like eating a razor blade. Maybe the carnivore diet will be better for you, which some people will be throwing their arms up in horror at. So, that's the thing, find what works for you.
Dave : Yeah, you're right. And one of the biggest things around food science without getting into a kind of debate is that it's very very hard to research anywhere and there's so many confounding factors that, that actually how certain can we be. So the only real approach is to kind of look at yourself and take your own approach of what works and what sustainable isn't it because there's that old cliché of you know, the best diet is the one you stick to. There’s got to be an element of health in there. Healthy, healthy years stuff.
Simon : Well, I think the things and you're right, you know, you look at research and find out that it's been funded by somebody who's got a vested interest. I mean Game Changes the documentary got widespread massive thumbs up from a lot of people and a lot of people saying that ‘I'm going to be a vegetarian or vegan now’ but then you find out that James Cameron who produced owns the biggest pea protein producing factory in the world. And Lewis Hamilton is a vegan as well and he was partly to do with the funding of that. I'm not saying that there aren't some valid points in it but maybe there's a little bit of bias in there as well. Equally there's that Forks Over Knives as well isn't there which is another one about a more of a vegetarian diet, but it doesn't work for everybody, but I mean there are certain things that we probably do agree on is refined sugars. If you can eat less sugar and processed foods. So if it's grown, if it's caught or you've killed it, it's probably better for you than if it came in a packet from the supermarket because when it's come in a packet it's been in a factory so it's further away from the original source, and it's probably had to have things added to it to preserve it. Just because you feel like going vegan or vegetarian is a healthier lifestyle, if you go and eat vegan McNuggets, it's still shit food, right? Honestly, if you want the taste of meat, why are you giving up anyway? I understand the ethical thing, but you know in order to make something that tastes like meat, what have they added to it and manufactured in the factory to achieve that taste.
Dave: One of the things that I find a lot for myself but also talking to other people is that it feels like, in the world of health, not just diet but fitness, sleep, all of this, so much should, so many shoulds, and often their conflicting shoulds aren’t they. Like, where do I start? And one of the things I found really liberating is a sense of actually understanding that, you know, you could find a success story in each of these areas. So, take off the pressure and kind of just go with what works for you and make those small changes and see what can be significant. So, you know, I totally respect somebody who wants to be vegetarian and or vegan
Simon : Me too, yeah.
Dave : Yeah, you know, and I've got friends there and I've dabbled myself. It wasn't sustainable for me you know, in that sense but fine but it's about what changes can we make. So the first change I often say is let's take the guilt off and the pressure off for starters, and let's see what changes you can actually pragmatically make to change. And you've mentioned sleep and I think I'm with you on that one. I think one of the things, I have a client who particularly made massive changes in lifestyle and weight loss. Largely, it wasn't only because there's a lot of work went into it but that keystone habit, that foundation was to change approaches to sleep attitude, to sleep and routine and rituals around it. So, what would be your advice if anybody, you know, they have a lot on their plate, a lot to think about. There's lots of competing ideas, but they just want to get a bit healthier, you've kind of indicated the move more, sleep better. What would be some of the tips around sleep then because you mentioned pre and post sleep routines. Any particular things that jump out?
Simon : Okay, so you're right in any subject there's confounding advice and often that's driven by people who've got something to sell. And so, they come out with this amazing headline. But then if you read a bit more and speak to the experts you find that there are certain common elements that come out all the time - sleep consistency seems to be the one. So if you can try to get to bed and get up at the same time every night, then your body gets used to that. Number two, have a sleep environment that's conducive to good sleep. If you have a Bedroom, a Bedroom is for sleeping and sex, and that's it. All right, it's not an office, it's not a place where you've got a home entertainment system where you watch the telly and you've got music and Wi Fi coming in. It needs to be a calming environment where you go to sleep. If you can get rid of the telly. If you want something to do before you go to sleep either talk with your partner or read a book and then send yourself off to sleep. Then other things that seem to get in the way of sleep, particularly at this time of year, is light; artificial light or natural light so if you can create a darkened room that's good. Room temperature seems somewhere between 15 and 19 degrees seems to be about the right temperature so having the window slightly open, try closing the curtains during the day if the sun shines in there so keeping the room cool. Having a comfortable bed and comfortable sheets or duvet. And then, before you go to bed, think about things like what you're doing in the couple of hours before. If you eat late at night an hour before you go to bed then often you’re still digesting that food and that it will affect your ability to go to sleep and get decent sleep. If you consume alcohol just before you go to bed. Yes, you probably will fall asleep quicker but there's so many studies of brainwaves and what happens that it's not quality sleep and it takes you much longer to get into deep restorative sleep and REM sleep if you drink alcohol, just before you go to bed. Working and sort of activating the brain by answering emails and messing around on your computer that you get the blue light that comes in, that's one thing and then just the fact that your mind is active, thinking about work or other things if you're looking at emails. Try to shut those down a couple of hours before you go to bed.
And then the other end of the day is when you get up in the morning. Actually the routine that you have first thing in the morning can influence what happens at night. So trying to get bright sunshine into your eyes helps to create serotonin which then leads to production of melatonin later on in the day which helps you sort of get into that sleepy state. So getting outside even on a dull day, maybe having a walk around the neighbourhood, walk the dog, just sitting in the garden or sitting in the yard and just having a cup of coffee if you like and breathe some fresh air. So that will be it really, they’re the key things that seem to come across regularly for better sleep but sleep consistency in the time you go to bed and the time you get up are one of the biggest ones.
Dave : Yeah, one of the challenges that I have with many people I work with, is that they work shifts and that is one of the real challenges. But you can take those principles out, can’t you, you know, if you finish on a night shift and it's as it is at the moment, you know, it's light when you finish how'd you just reduce the light into your eyes towards the back end of your shift but also after your shift driving home that kind of thing. So, there are things that you can do but as you say to take the principles and create routines around those. I call it a preZed time routine, you know pre, what do you do the last 15 minutes to 90 minutes before and then obviously waking up.
So, some great advice and I think, to just reinforce it because we've talked about a lot of things there, it goes back to this idea that we might have a goal, and you know we've talked a lot about health goals which I think, you know, particularly for somebody my age and what have you, it's something I really am focusing on. It's about what small changes can I make that are sustainable and some of those changes, or in fact, many of them are not actually directly related to the exercise I do. It's around things like sleep, it's about relaxation, it's about getting some daylight and obviously what you put in your mouth as well in terms of food.
Simon : If I go back, I'd like to reference Nick Littlehales for sleep. He does a lot, he’s a sleep consultant. He's written a book called Sleep. He's got his own website called Sport Sleep Coach. You can maybe put a link, but Nick's been a guest on my podcast a couple of times and he's presenting for us at triathlon workshops. He talks a lot about what people can do if they're working on shift patterns, particularly if you're always working nights, it's a little easier because your body gets into routine. But if you're in say, the emergency responder services, you know the police, the fire service, the ambulance where you might be working in early shift for a few days, then a late shift, then a night shift and it's constantly changing he's got some ideas on that whole process there and he’s studied it in more depth than I have.
Dave : That'd be great. So we'll get those links off you Simon and I will put them in the show notes, and if there's any chance of getting them on an interview on here that would be great because I do know, one of the things it's funny, I've done a lot of research and deliver some training and coaching around sleep over the last year, particularly around lockdown but one of the things that I often find in the books and the people that you read is that the advice is there but it's often - don't work shifts. You know, which is great if you've got that choice, or you choose that, but some people choose to work shifts because it gives different benefits and also there are financial rewards. I'm very much fascinated around how can we take what we understand, to help people who are working those irregular unpredictable shifts. And one of the things that I think is really apparent is the anxiety over the quality of sleep they're getting or not getting. That's something that I'm really working hard to try and help them take that pressure off because I think it was you that shared a couple of articles about that. It's not the total agreement around, you know, that the harmful effects of shift working and what have you in that so that'll be fascinating to maybe connect with him actually.
Simon : I think, you know, if I could add one more piece of advice there about what do you do and how you get started is often we get side-tracked into thinking about the outcome. So, the outcome that I want from a diet is that I want to lose three stone and so I'm fixated on the outcome. That's 42 pounds and I've given myself three months so I'm expecting to lose half a pound a day, right? That's quite a lot of reduction. Then every morning I get up and I look at the outcome on the scales and one, you know, for the first few days I'm really happy because I'm losing a bit of water because I've cut down my bread. And then it stalls and then I'm upset, and then another day it goes up and so I think the diet's over and so I tip it all in rather than focusing on the process, so the process is what healthy changes can I make. If you do the right things on a regular basis you will get towards your goal. Often, the outcome we've set ourselves is far too big and far too soon and then that's why we fail as well because losing 42 pounds over 12 months is much more achievable and sustainable than it is losing it over three months but still, if you focus on the process right, I'm going to cut out sugars today, i'm not going to drink any alcohol, I'm going to get rid of processed food, and just follow that principle every day, and ignore the weight loss, it'll happen anyway and you'll feel healthier. And that is the principle behind the success of most businesspeople, and elite athletes. Yes, they have got an outcome and they keep an eye on it, but they're focused on the process of what they do every day in order to get to that level, and they get the basics right.
Dave : I love that it ties in because I often say focus on the sprouts not the cabbage and that's kind of the outcome versus the daily habits. Track the sprouts, track the habits, you know, track those daily things as in not you know, not checking on your scales but track have I done it? Or am I doing it? So, yeah, I love that, and I think that that's probably a great way to close actually Simon because I think if we can get those processes right and take the pressure off when and what it looked like it'll happen before we know it, kind of like the opposite of the negative before you know phenomenal.
Thanks so much for your time, I appreciate all that you've shared with us there. Can you if anybody wants to pick up with you, you know, find out more about you, we will put some links and show notes but if you want to give a shout out for anything that you've got going on at the moment or where they can find you.
Simon : Oh yeah well obviously this the podcast so that's, that's my High Performance Humor podcast. You can find that on iTunes or Pod Bean or go to my website simonward.co.uk and just click on the link for the podcast and you'll see the latest one that's been added to the list. If you want to follow me on social media, I'm mostly on Facebook, I'm Simon.Ward1. So, connect with me there and you can find me on Twitter as @TriathlonCoach, and also on Instagram with the same title. And, yeah, that's about it. I'm pretty much all-over social media. So, if you look hard enough you’ll find me.
Dave : Yeah, you do pop up quite a bit, and actually funny enough you were, one of your episodes has popped up in the CrossFit Facebook group in my little box or obviously you're well known within that community as well.
Simon : That was probably the interview with Kelly Starrett was it, he’s a big wheel in the CrossFit industry.
Dave : I can't remember which one it was, it probably would have been, but yeah great.
Simon : Yeah, mobility coach, Kelly K-Starr as he’s called in the CrossFit world.
Dave : Great, well thank you so much for your time. Some brilliant insights and it's great to hear that, you know, those messages coming from somebody who was so experienced has a lot of credibility working with those high-performance humans that we look up to, the athletes and people who are working at that extreme I guess from for many of us to know that actually, it's the basics to count. That takes off such a lot pressure. I feel that if we can just focus on that we may not get to that but we can have our own version of that. So thanks very much Simon, brilliant, thank you.
Simon : You're welcome Dave. It's been great to catch up.
Episode 9 Teaser:
In episode 9, Dave explores overwhelm and how we can practically move through it and beyond it to build a more focused and enjoyable approach to life.